Wednesday, May 31, 2006

spring survey

the "meadow" during whitman

kitchen survey

bathhouse survey

composting toilet survey

during whitman gathering michel and i, with the help of a few others now and then, surveyed the three building sites we plan to work on this summer. we used a self-leveling laser to shoot elevations and set up grade stakes at the corners of the survey. we noted the locations of rocks, trees and other landscape features, such as the swale near the kitchen. i plotted one-foot contours on the drawings shown here. click on any one of them to see a larger version. the survey's are accurate to about 6", good enough for our purposes.

i also took the noon sun location to give me a bead on south (i have never had a compass on the land). taking the position of the sun at clock-time noon gives you a rough location on south. it varies slightly because of the relationship of the earth's orbit to the sun. here are some photos and descriptions of how the sun varies: http://solar-center.stanford.edu/art/analemma.html.